Now that winter is just around the corner, homeowners in Kenner, LA, have begun turning their attention to how best to heat their homes. Two options that are bound to come up in everyone’s search are furnaces and space heaters. Here are a few reasons why furnaces are the better choice.
1. Furnaces Heat Your Whole House
Space heaters aren’t built to heat an entire home, while furnaces are. A space heater is a small or mid-sized unit that has the power to heat a single room effectively, but a furnace is a large, comprehensive, house-wide system. While the single-room or single-zone approach that space heaters offer can be useful in some contexts, this massive power differential clearly favors furnaces.
Additionally, even if your living situation calls for zoned heating, you can adjust or modify a furnace for this purpose by having a professional connect it to a compressor and place a different thermostat in each of your desired heating zones. By contrast, you can’t expand the power of a single space heater to heat an entire house.
2. Furnaces Are Much Better for Large Homes
Space heaters are next to useless in a large home. Though one of them may be sufficient to heat a room of ordinary size, the story changes if the room in question is massive or if you need to heat a large hall. No such problems arise with central furnaces.
3. Greater Energy Efficiency
Many furnaces run on natural gas (though there are some that use electricity or oil), while space heaters consume electricity. Natural gas is a more efficient energy source than electricity, particularly during colder months. Therefore, it will cost significantly less to heat your home this fall and winter with a furnace than it will cost to do the same with a series of space heaters.
4. Safety Concerns
Since space heaters are small, standalone units, it’s easy to knock them over accidentally. If this happens, the device won’t be able to properly expel the hot air it generates, causing it to overheat. That can not only damage the device but, under the right circumstances, it may even cause a fire to erupt.
Furnaces, of course, carry their own peculiar set of safety concerns, the two most serious of which are gas leaks and smoke and dust expulsion through your ventilation ducts that might harm your indoor air quality. Furnaces come with sensors that alert you to gas leaks, but the risks still exists. Remembering to change out your furnace filter regularly and cleaning the critical pipes is the most effective way to avoid the latter problem.
In general, requesting prompt repairs and maintenance from professional technicians will allow you to sidestep the furnace-related risks mentioned above. HVAC industry professionals consistently advise everyone to schedule maintenance for all parts of a heating and cooling system, including the furnace, once per year. In addition to keeping you safe, this will extend your furnace’s lifespan and allow it to run optimally for as long as possible.
5. Upfront and Total Costs
The only area where space heaters seem to have a clear advantage over furnaces is that of upfront costs. Installing a new furnace, while certainly not prohibitively expensive, will cost more than buying one or a few space heaters, especially if you also need to pass a gas line and set up new ductwork for it.
However, even this is not a victory for the space heater. When you balance this consideration against furnaces’ greater energy efficiency and heating power, it’s quite likely that a furnace will impose a lower total cost on you in the long run.
While space heaters certainly have their uses, furnaces are by far the superior home heating solution. To get the best furnace services in the area, just call Bryans United Air Conditioning and ask for our comprehensive suite of heating services.
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